Bengaluru: The former sanitation worker at Dharmasthala, whose sensational claims about burying scores of bodies created a storm leading to the formation of a Special Investigation Team (SIT), has surfaced in a video in which he identified himself as ‘Chinna’.
Several of these videos, which were supposedly recorded before 4 July, were released a day after his arrest by the SIT on Saturday over charges of perjury. ThePrint couldn’t verify the authenticity of these videos.
Speaking to an online platform, DTalks, ‘Chinna’ claimed that he was forced out of the temple town as he knew too much about the rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl in 2012. “I was forced out of Dharmasthala as they (members of an influential family) thought I would spill the secrets of Sowjanya’s murder,” he said.
The teen’s body was found the next day, half-naked, bruised and tied to a tree, near their home in Dharmasthala. Her case remains unsolved to this day.
The person, who identifies himself as ‘Chinna’, is seen responding to questions facing the camera not just to DTalks but multiple other online platforms. His identity had been kept a secret until his arrest on Saturday.
In one of the interviews, he claimed that during his time as a grave digger between 1995 and 2014, he had buried as many as 1,500 bodies.
The former temple worker, in his complaint on 4 July, said he was forced into disposing of “hundreds” of bodies, mostly of women which bore signs of sexual assault, murder and torture, by people “connected to the Dharmasthala temple administration and other staff members”.
On 10 July, carried a human skull, supposedly of a woman he buried many years ago, to a Belthangady court. He claimed to have exhumed the human remains himself.
From being given protection, he was arrested by the SIT after he claimed that the police was present in all the burials he carried out, marking a U-turn from his earlier statements which hinted at secret disposal of bodies. “We have buried bodies in the presence of police officers,” he claims in the interview.
Meanwhile the SIT questioned several members, including a YouTuber who has been consistently posting about the controversy and others who were spearheading the ‘Justice for Sowjanya’ campaign.
‘I too would have been killed’
Since the SIT was formed on 19 July, the former sanitation worker has identified at least 13 spots where he allegedly buried some of these bodies. In his statement to the Belthangady court, he mentioned five instances of women who he suspected were sexually assaulted and murdered.
But since the excavation began, the SIT has found one human remains in Site 6, a skull and 81 bones near Site 11. But all these skeletal remains, including the one he brought to court, turned out to be that of males, ThePrint reported earlier.
In the interviews, claimed to be recorded before he was given witness protection, the former sanitation worker says that only he can identify the very locations where he had buried these bodies.
The former sanitation worker claimed that he was paid Rs 30 per day to bury bodies and used to get a little extra sometimes for his work. He says that he would be threatened with assault or eviction from his home if he did not bury a body.
There are some inconsistencies in the police complaint and the multiple video interviews—before and after the arrest—of the same person.
Ravi Poojari, a former hotel worker, had confided in him about the rape and murder of Sowjanya, he claimed in the YouTube interview.
He then goes on to claim that Poojari was ‘murdered’ in the office. Poojari was among the people questioned in the teen’s murder. Another person, Gopala Krishna, was also questioned in the case. Poojari allegedly died by suicide and Krishna died of a disease, according to an order passed by the Additional City Civil & Sessions Court document on 7 February 2017.
The court order records the claims that Poojari was murdered.
In the video interview, the former sanitation worker claimed that he was forced out of Dharmasthala as the ‘influential family’ suspected him as he was seen interacting with the family of the teen who was murdered in 2012. “If they knew that Poojari had told me what he knew, I too would have been killed,” he claims.
But in the statement released by his lawyers on 3 July, the man escaped from Dharmasthala since he could not bear the mental torture and sexual harassment towards one of his own.
The person claiming to be the former sanitation worker mentions the terms ‘Dhani’ (landlord), ‘Sanna-Dhani’ (younger landlord) and ‘Sanna-Dhani maga’ (son of younger landlord) to hint at the alleged involvement of several of the of members of the influential family in many of these crimes in his conversations with multiple online platforms.
‘Larger agenda’
Though the former sanitation worker’s complaint mentions no names, there have been tacit references to the Dharmasthala temple management. Rajya Sabha MP Veerendra Heggade is the chief administrator (Dharmadhikari) of the Dharmasthala temple.
The issue has since been projected as an attack on Hindu religious sentiments, especially by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Tejasvi Surya, the Bengaluru South MP, Monday asked five questions to the Siddaramaiah government.
“The allegations of an unnamed masked man were absurd on the face of it—yet your government treated them as gospel, ignoring contrary advice from a few senior police officials to at least hold a preliminary inquiry before constituting an SIT,” Surya asked in a lengthy post on ‘X’.
“Did you fail to see they were baseless, or were you complicit in a larger conspiracy? Would you have shown the same enthusiasm and urgency in constituting an SIT, if the allegations were made against a non-Hindu religious institution?”
The Congress government, Surya posted, should hand over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) if its “conscience is clear”. The BJP MP added that there was a larger agenda behind the Dharmasthala conspiracy.
BJP state president B.Y.Vijayendra demanded that the case be handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA). To press for this demand, Vijayendra announced a ‘Dharmasthala Chalo’ movement, starting 1 September.
He said that the government’s handling of the Dharmasthala issue has tarnished its reputation, and a thorough investigation by the NIA is essential to uncover the organisations and malicious forces behind the controversy.
(Edited by Tony Rai)